Bees

A SWARM OF BEES
Ten or fifteen years ago I was working the third shift. That was from about PM to AM.

I was working with an electrician, Jerry White. Jerry was a part time farmer and had a few honey bee hives. They were on his 10 acre farm when he bought it and he was in the learning stage of bee-ology :D Me? I didn't know squat.

Someone, I don't remember who, came up to me and told me about a swarm of bees on the side of the building. I went out to look as I had never seen one. Man what a bunch of bees.

There they were, a circle of them about the size of a garbage can lid and about 4 inches thick!! :shock :shock I had never seen so many bees in one place and my first reaction was to back off. They could have carried me off!! They were on the wall of the building and only about three feet off the ground. It was dark out but they were under a light, which was on the wall of the building.

I knew Jerry had bees so I went and told him about them. Foolishly I figured anyone that had bees would know something about them.

He said he wanted them and asked ME :shock :shock how to get them!! Dumbass :lol

I was always into nature and such and knew more than average, just because I like to read anything I could about it and had picked up a few things. None of the things I really remembered had diddly to do with swarming bees though.

I did remember that I read somewhere that they were very docile when they were swarming and easily caught. Right :shock Being blessed with a line of BS and not wanting to tell Jerry that I didn't know squat I dredged up the little I did know and told him we could catch them.

He said How? I told him that we needed something to put them in. He went and found a cardboard box, about 1x1x2 and said it might work. What the hell does he mean might?? :shock It has gotta!

We got come duct tape and taped that box up so there was no way they could get out, if we were lucky enough to get them in the dang thing. We then used a pencil to poke small holes in it in case the bees needed air.

All the time we were looking at each other with a, (you sure a dumbass for being even thinking of doing this, Look) He kept asking me if I was sure it would work and I said sure I was. I was lying.

We cut a couple little 6x6 squares of cardboard to scrape them off the wall, in case we could not talk them into walking off and getting into the box. We didn't know if that was the way to do it but I sure was not gonna use my hand :shock :D

Some of our fellow workers saw what we were up to and said we were nuts. I guess they were right but we were on a mission now and I wanted to know if what I had read, about their docilness when in swarm, was true.

We walked out to the swarm and stood there looking at it. Boy was it big! It was right there in front of us and seemed so quiet and calm. No bees even bothered to fly out to look us over, even though we were less than a yard away. The bees did not seem to be asleep, at least the outer ones, as they were constantly moving.

I knew the queen was in the center of the mass somewhere and I told Jerry that we had to make sure that we got them all and that the hive would die without her.

Both of us were ready. Both of us were scared. We had a planned retreat, which was plain stupid because if we pissed off that swarm we had no chance of getting away.

We looked at each other and gave the-What the hell- look and one of us held the box directly under the swarm, one edge against the wall at an angle. So far so good.

We just stood there and watched the bees. They did not seem to even take notice, although I was convinced that I was gonna get et and it was all Jerry's fault. The look on Jerry's fact told me that he was a thinking I was a dumbass and I had let his mothers little boy astray.

Well we both took the scrapers and put them against the wall, directly above the mass, still holding the box tightly against the wall, under them. We were still scared to actually do it but looking at each other, we both said, "What the ****" and started gently scraping the bees into the box.

I was amazed because they just plopped in without any fuss at all. After the first glob of them, there must have been a hundred or so, we just proceeded to scrape them all into the box. Not one even threatened to bite us and seemed intent on keeping the queen happy and warm. We never saw her but she had to be in there as we only missed a few bees. We could have gotten them but they were crawling up the wall and I figured we had been very lucky as it was.

We folded the top on the box and taped the seams, trapping the bees. We had an audience of course and they seemed disappointed that we were not stung to death. One guy said that we were very brave and I said, "I know that" :D all the time thanking the stars that I had read that book right.

Jerry took them home and introduced them to a new hive. I am not sure if they were successful or not but it is a memory that comes back every time someone mentions bees.